Introduction: MacBook Unibody Broken Screen - How to Tell If Your Glass or LCD Is Broken

By TechRestore
About: We love the Mac! TechRestore was started by a group of Mac fans and we have since performed over 50,000 repairs on PowerBooks, iBooks, MacBooks and MacBook Pro systems. We also repair iPhones and iPod Touch. L…

First released in October of 2008, the Unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro systems were the first systems that includes a glass cover installed on top of the LCD screen. There's all kinds of arguments out there about whether this glass is a good or bad thing, but for today's discussion we'll skip that topic. What I want to show you is how to tell if your glass cover is broken, your LCD or both.

Step 1: MacBook Broken Screen - Step 1 - Broken Glass

The most common type of screen breakage on a unibody MacBook or MacBook Pro is glass damage. The glass cover that is on top of the LCD screen usually takes the brunt of the damage and cracks with impact.

The glass cover is actually one piece of thin glass, sandwiched between two layers of plastic film. This means that when your glass breaks, little pieces typically will not fly everywhere (this is a good thing), but rather, the screen will "spider-web" with cracks showing up all over.

Step 2: MacBook Broken Screen - Step 2 - Broken LCD

If your MacBook unibody glass looks OK, but your screen looks like it has ink blotches on it, chances are you have broken your LCD screen. LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display and yes, there is liquid inside of the display, thus, those inky blotches you are seeing.

This type of damage will require removal of the glass cover and replacement of the LCD screen. In the next step, we will highlight a visual guide to help you quickly discern which type of repair you need.

Step 3: Bad Mojo - Broken MacBook Screen AND Glass

If you are unlucky enough to have really hammered your MacBook or MacBook Pro unibody, then you may see spidered glass cracks, as well as inky blotches on your LCD screen. In this case, you will need to replace both the glass and the LCD screen itself.

Both the glass screen cover and LCD screen are available for self-repair and with installation. It just depends how handy you are, or who you know that might be able to help you perform the repair.

Take a look at the visual guide on this page to quickly see which type of repair you need to schedule, or which type of part you need to order if you want to perform the repair yourself.

We hope this helps with your screen repair.

Shannon Jean
Founder
TechRestore